Native women backing London MP's torture bill

With a crucial second reading looming, a London MP’s bill to broaden Canadian torture laws has drawn the support of a national group of native women.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada is backing the push by Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal MP for London North Centre, to make torture a crime when committed by ordinary citizens.

Now, the term is only applied to crimes committed by the state — such as a police officer who beats on a suspect for hours.

“You have our full support,” Dawn Harvard, president of the native group, writes in a letter to Fragiskatos.

“(Our group) is committed to developing concrete actions and activities that will end the cycle of violence, particularly that which may lead to disappearance and death of aboriginal women and girls.”

Fragiskatos, elected last fall, won the Ottawa equivalent of the lottery when he arrived on Parliament Hill: each MP draws a number to set the order in which they can table private member’s bills.

Anyone who draws a high number will likely never get a chance to table one this term. Fragiskatos drew No. 9.

“I do not take this stroke of good luck lightly,” he said in an interview this winter.

Torture isn’t legally a crime when committed in what Fragiskatos calls “the private sphere” — even if the acts committed by an ordinary citizen are tantamount to it. That cheats victims, he has argued.

“When suffering goes unacknowledged, justice cannot be said to exist.”

Also backing his bill are the Canadian Nurses Association and the Canadian Federation of University Women, underscoring the sense that many victims of crimes that could qualify as torture are female.

Fragiskatos introduced the bill in the House of Commons, which qualified as the first reading. The second reading, with a vote, looms later this month.

It must then pass a third reading and vote, then go through the Senate where, if approved, it becomes law.